Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "chennai"
-
It's raining in Chennai, India.
Flooding in quite a few areas.
The areas hit bad are where the IT companies have set up shop. More rain is expected .
If you know guys from here please check and see if they're OK. It was almost impossible to get back home from work for many people last night.
Uber was charging 600% more for a ride.
Hope you guys from Chennai are safe.8 -
The entire reason I became a developer was so that I could one day build something that I can say has/had a handful of users, that I could build something that helped save someone's life, that helped someone in their time of need.
That reason was fulfilled when I built my only successful and proudest project during a cold night in 2011. I was 16 at the time, and here in South India, there was a major cyclone affecting a portion of our country (Chennai/Tamil Nadu). A lot of my family were in affected areas, and I didn't know what I could do being so far away (around 400kms/250mi away, in Bangalore).
I stayed up all night to build what was then known as ChennaiRains.org. It was a simple website, a directory and a safe house for everyone's information. Whoever needed help, whoever was ready to give help, whoever was volunteering their travel, their time. I didn't think it would help much. I just wanted to make a small difference.
Next morning, after the hangover of the all-nighter I pulled faded away, I see that the website went viral after a few shares on Twitter. The community was so supportive of my little project to help my family and friends. It caught a peak traffic of a million users overnight, no ads, no money made from this, I just earned the experience of a lifetime. It eventually helped a lot of people in need, connected a lot of volunteers and victims.
It has been the epitome of my life. It's the reason I still develop applications to-date, even if they are simple. Somewhere out there, someone needs it, and I want to be able to help to them :)4